Journalists lash IOPC exec for downplaying oil spill

Two months since the oil spill in Guimaras began, the sunken MT Solar 1 remains at the bottom of the Guimaras Strait and continues to leak bunker oil, displacing over 40,000 residents and destroying the environment. But International Oil Pollution Compensation (IOPC) Deputy Director Joe Nichols wants the media to downplay the environmental disaster.

For this, Nichols got the ire of the media. “An oil spill is an oil spill. It is made worse by the fact that - small or big - the Petron oil spill has ravaged one of the country’s richest marine biodiverse areas and compromised the future of a promising province,” said Hazel Villa, vice chairman of National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)-Iloilo Chapter.

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